February 29, 2024 Show with Marcus Serven on “John Calvin in the Role of Pastor” (Part 2)

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Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours and we hope to hear from you the listener

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And now here's your host, Chris Arnzen.

Good afternoon Cumberland.

County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth.

We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com.

This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this

28th day of February 2024.

I'm thrilled to have a returning guest who is going to be addressing part

two of a topic that we launched into recently.

I believe it was last month and or middle of the month somewhere.

And we had so much information that we had to share the first time

that we had to extend this to a two -part interview.

I am speaking of my guest Marcus Servin, pastor of Christian discipleship at

Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin, Texas, which is a congregation within the

Presbyterian Church in America, also known as the PCA.

And today we're going to be addressing part two of John Calvin and the role of pastor.

It's my honor and privilege to.

Welcome you back to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Marcus Servin.

Thanks a lot, Chris.

Great to be here.

Well, why don't you tell our listeners, for the sake of those especially who missed our first

interview, tell our listeners about Redeemer Presbyterian Church of

Austin, Texas, and then also tell our listeners.

About the Genevan Foundation.

Yeah, Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin.

I came here about seven years ago to Austin after a long career

in pastoral ministry, and my plan was to retire and to do

what Calvin wanted to do, which was to write and disciple and do those kind of things.

And as I volunteered in service and teaching at Redeemer, then

in pretty short order, the elders asked me to come out of retirement and to begin

serving the church again, but this time just part -time.

And that's been really wonderful.

It's a rich church in terms of liturgy, love of music,

preaching of the Word, a church of about 500 members, so it is a downtown

church, and we have all the complications of ministering to people in very liberal,

progressive Austin, Texas.

But the church, I believe, is a good, light shining on the hill

in proclaiming the gospel, holding to the inerrancy of the Scriptures, and also preaching and

exalting the Reformed faith.

So I'm very glad to be of service there.

Well, praise God.

And if anybody is.

Either traveling through Austin, Texas, or if you live in

Austin, Texas, or you have family, friends, and loved ones in Austin, Texas,

you can go to the website to find out more about Redeemer Presbyterian Church there in Austin at

RedeemerPres .org.

Now tell us about the Genevan Foundation.

Sure.

Probably 20 years ago, my family, we have a large family, nine adult children

now, and lots of grandkids coming our way, which is a great blessing.

But we started singing the Psalms together, and so we started a little website

where we offered the Psalms that we were singing and put on CDs and so forth.

Once the kids have grown, and now they're all grown up, I took over that website and turned it

into a place for putting my writings on church history, especially writings

about the Reformation.

And the name, the Genevan Foundation, just simply symbolizes the fact that

so much of what we believe and practice in the Protestant church today comes

from the example of the church in Geneva, which was headed up by John Calvin.

And so there I've written lots of articles on different Reformers, different figures in American

church history, and then a number of theological articles.

Just recently, we launched a new endeavor at Redeemer Presbyterian called the Redeemer Theological

Academy.

The elders very kindly appointed me the director of that, and so we are offering classes now,

in -person classes, not online or anything like that, but in -person classes in theology, in

church history, apologetics, biblical studies, and practical ministry.

Those are the five areas.

So here we are in retirement, but still staying very, very busy.

Well, praise God, and if anybody wants to find out more about the Genevan Foundation, go to

thegenevanfoundation .com, thegenevanfoundation

.com.

I also encourage everybody listening, after this live program is over, if you missed part

one of our discussion on John Calvin and the role of pastor, and we never actually got into the

specific aspect of Calvin as a pastor.

We were talking about Marcus's own personal salvation testimony and some

background information about Calvin that was very important, but we never got into the depth

of his role of pastor, which is our main theme, I should say.

But you could go into the Iron Trip and Zion Radio archive, irontripandzionradio .com, type in

the name Servan, S -E -R -V as in Victor, E -N,

Servan, and that interview on January 29th of 2024

will come up, and that is part one of this discussion.

So, bring us back to where you want to pick up the

conversation.

Marcus, if you want to give an overview of anything that we discussed in our first part of this discussion,

you can do that, or just begin the.

Conversation wherever you want.

Well, there's so much to say about John Calvin.

I've been studying his life and ministry for over 40 years, and collecting all

of his books, as well as books about him, I had a chance to write a

dissertation on Calvin and his role as pastor, and that was a wonderful privilege to

do so.

Something I've reminded the listeners about, that Calvin's personal motto was the

following, Cor muam tibi offero domini prompt et sincere.

Yeah, that's the tattoo I have on my chest.

I'm only kidding.

Just kidding.

Well translated, it is, my heart I offer to you, Lord, promptly and

sincerely.

And so, we think about the man, John Calvin, who really only lived about

55 years.

He died a few months prior to his 55th birthday, but the

immense, indefatigable amount of work that he accomplished,

not only in terms of preaching and teaching, but also in the writing of significant books like

the Institutes of the Christian Religion, and all the practices that he established

in his role as a pastor.

For example, in Geneva, in the worship there, you'll find a pattern

for worship that has filtered down all the way to this current age,

and many Reformed and Presbyterian churches of various stripes really

have the roots of their worship service in the Geneva order of worship.

Beyond that, we see Calvin popularizing what we would call expository

preaching.

That kind of preaching was pretty well unknown prior to

the times of Calvin.

But we see a hunger in the people of God during the time of the Reformation for

expositional teaching from the scriptures, line by line, chapter by chapter,

verse by verse, and that's exactly what Calvin popularizes and gives to people, so that

people were like hungry folks who are ravenous for the Word of God,

and that's one of the things that he did.

Another important aspect of Calvin's pastoral ministry is that he brought about the practice

of the visitation of elders.

The elders in the church in Geneva had the responsibility for overseeing the different

families in their parish.

They had a parish system that would consist of any number of families, maybe 50 to 100 families,

and those elders who were over that parish and the deacons were responsible to

both be encouragers and also those who would hold people to the Christian faith and

attendance at church and so forth, the catechism of their children and all of that.

So, these are all aspects of pastoral ministry that Calvin was very much a part of,

and he didn't have the easiest time of bringing them about.

There were lots of people who opposed Calvin at different points, especially a group in

Geneva which became known as the Infants de Geneva, who were

also known as the Libertines.

That would be their more common nomenclature of how they were known, but they were a group of

people in Geneva made up of some of the principal families.

They all assented to the affirmation of the doctrinal standards of

the church in Geneva that Guillaume Farel, Calvin, and Pierre Viret,

and other different reformers had brought to bear, but they weren't so keen on

the transformation of morals and their way of life.

Geneva was a very cosmopolitan type of city.

Every vice that you could possibly think of, you could easily find there.

It was at the very end of Lake Le Mans or what later became known as Lake Geneva.

It was the gateway down into France, so there was a lot of trade, a lot of commerce that took place there,

and it was quite a challenge for the reformers, in particular Calvin, to bring

about a reformation time in the period of

roughly 1541 all the way up to 1545 or

55, so roughly 14 years of challenging

work turmoil at times when Calvin thought he was going to lose his

position altogether and be thrown out of the city for a second time

and at different points where they saw some gain, but it was

a struggle during those 14 years in particular.

So I'm going to pick up right at that point, Chris, if you don't mind.

That'd be great.

Well, first of all, when Calvin came back to Geneva in 1541 in November,

he had been exiled from Geneva along with Pharrell and various other pastors

because they refused to celebrate the Lord's Supper in the Easter

of 1538.

The city council was incensed by that, and they declared all the

preachers, including Calvin, as persona non grata, and they had to leave.

They gave him a very short window of time to get out of town.

But as those two and a half years went by, there were several situations that arose that

made the Geneva City Council realize what a fool they were or what fools

they were to get rid of Calvin.

There was a letter, for example, from Cardinal Sattoletto, a Roman Catholic bishop

and cardinal in Italy, who wrote to try to win the Genevan church back to

Roman Catholicism.

Yeah, that correspondence is a very important event

in history, actually, isn't it, with Calvin and Cardinal Sattoletto?

They couldn't find anyone in Geneva to answer Sattoletto.

So eventually someone had the idea of sending his letter to Calvin, who at that time was

minister in Strasbourg alongside of Martin Busser.

And Calvin, in three days' time, wrote this brilliant response, which he sent back to

Geneva, and they then forwarded that on to Sattoletto.

And the response of Calvin was so powerful in refuting the arguments that Sattoletto put forward

that at that point, the people in Geneva realized they had to get John

Calvin back.

And so they began working to do that very thing.

By the way, I'm sorry I keep interrupting you, but can you remind our listeners why they

refused to observe the Lord's table at Easter?

The reason why is that the town of Geneva had

descended over many, many decades into a very

despicable, violent, and immoral place.

And the efforts of the reformers, Calvin and Farel and a few others, were not

producing all the fruit that they had hoped.

And so they felt that it would be an offense to God to celebrate the Lord's

Supper in April of 1538.

And so they refused to do so to allow the people to receive the supper when there was

a lack of repentance and a kind of a double -minded approach.

They would affirm doctrine, but they wouldn't change their lives.

And that's what got them in trouble with the Geneva City Council.

So they even banned the Lord's table to those who were

giving evidence of genuine saving faith and repentance and godliness.

It was a universal thing that even Calvin himself didn't partake, right?

That's correct.

They felt that it would have been an offense to God to have the people receive the supper

when there was such a shabby standard of walking with Christ

in the city of Geneva.

And I just wanted to quickly say, and then I'm not going to interrupt you so much anymore,

this really is such glaring evidence

against some of Calvinism's enemies.

You know, you have enemies who are firing their weapons at Calvinism from all sides.

Some who actually believe, or should I say, declare slanderously

that Calvinism teaches a work's righteousness, which is utterly absurd.

But there are those on the other side of the spectrum, including a

world -famous Calvary Chapel -affiliated pastor and preacher, Raul Ruiz,

who, I don't know if he's changed his opinion since then, but I can remember vividly him saying

on his program, there are people out there who believe you can live like the devil your whole

life and you'll still go to heaven when you die.

That's not in the Bible, man.

John Calvin made that up, man.

And obviously, Raul Ruiz had never read a single sentence by John Calvin because he never

would have come to the conclusion he did otherwise.

And what you just said about the banning of the Lord's Supper

that Easter because of the lack of repentance on the

majority of the populace of Geneva is glaring evidence that Calvin took a holy life very

seriously.

That's right.

Let me just read a list of different problems that were evident in Geneva that the

Reformers, notably Calvin, were trying to deal with.

One was excessive drunkenness.

Secondly, the abundance of taverns all over town.

Not that Calvin was against having wine or some other brewed beverage.

He was never against that, but there were people who abused that whole

aspect of life and that was a serious problem.

There was the Roman Catholic view of holidays, which turned them into

great feasting times, nothing against feasts, but the idea that they were

also idolatrous in the way that they were practiced, an abundance of gambling,

morality plays that were popular at that time at the later ends of

the medieval age.

There were sensual dances that took place, prostitution, divorce and

remarriage that was unscriptural.

There was an abundance of superstition.

I mean, these were just some of the issues that Calvin and the Reformers were trying to deal with

in Geneva.

One of the ways that they tried to deal with this right off is that Calvin came up with a

plan.

His plan was called the ecclesiastical ordinances.

Basically, it just meant the way in which the church was going to work.

How are they going to work their plan?

One of the things that he tried to do in particular was to bring about regular preaching

of the word and a regular observance of the Lord's Supper that in time

became the regular practice in Geneva.

It took a while to get there, but he wanted to get the city because the whole city was

expected to be a part of the church on a regular basis, not just individual

Christians or individual families here or there, but the entire city.

That was the understanding at that time.

In coming up with this plan, he set certain things in motion.

One of those was the establishment of a consistory.

That would be the idea of having not only the ministers of the church,

some of the ruling elders, some of the fathers of the city

council, and also some of the magistrates of the city council

all meeting together on Thursdays to deal with areas that were

problems in the life of different individuals.

Let's say, for example, that there was a husband who was abusing his wife and his children

and that would come to the attention of the elders.

They would seek to reason with a man following the practice of Matthew 18.

If there was no repentance, then they would go in two or three members, and if no repentance, they

would tell it to the church, which involved going to the consistory that met every Thursday

and calling such a person who was abusing his family to report to them.

They would exhort him by scripture, and there also would be a close relationship between

the church and the civil authorities.

That's a little different today where we have a much clearer separation of

powers, but at that time, in the 1500s, there was a much closer

relationship between church and state or the civil authorities, and so the

establishment of a consistory was an important aspect

for discipline.

There also was the recognition that there needed to be regular preaching, and so orderly

times of preaching were established in the church, not only on the Lord's Day, twice on the Lord's

Day, usually a morning and an afternoon service, but also midweek services.

And so Calvin and the reformers in Geneva established a time of coming to worship on

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

As time went along, that expanded out.

Those weren't obligatory services, but they were additional services where people could come and sit

under the preaching of the Word, and they could learn what it meant

to be free in Christ and to be one who is pardoned and freed from the guilt of sin,

what it meant to be a Christian, what it meant to lead a Christian life.

I mean, these were all important aspects in the life in Geneva.

That's why you see on the monument to the Reformation the words,

post -tenebrous lux.

Not a darkness light.

After darkness, light.

Yeah, that the gospel was making such an impact in the lives of the people in Geneva

that they were beginning to see to what degree they had been living in darkness under the

Roman Catholic system and how they needed to come out from it.

Well, let me tell you a little bit more about some of the struggles that Calvin had.

There were a number of individuals who gave him much grief through the life

of his life and his ministry.

In particular, there were some who sought to attack him in a straightforward

manner.

And just challenging him in public debate that didn't always go

over so well because one, Calvin had such an incredible memory that he was able to bring

up scripture citations and citations from the early church fathers, as well as a

very broad range of reading that he had accomplished and a

remarkable memory for citing lengthy passages.

And so he was able to defeat many of his opponents who came against

him.

And then there were more sneaky opponents, in particular, the Libertines, who always

seem to try to get under the skin of Calvin by

calling him insulting names, by floating

various lies and various innuendos around.

There was one time in 1547, if I have the date right, when

there was a plague in Geneva and there were lots of people who were

dying.

Some of Calvin's friends encouraged him to leave Geneva, which he never would do.

He refused to do so.

But there were some people who tried to essentially kill him at that point.

They would take some of the body fluids or bodily fluids from some of those who had died in the

plague, and they would go and wipe those over the door of his house

and over the doorknobs to try to kill him, he and his

family.

Wow.

It was a very shocking display of wickedness.

But you can see the way that people would descend to such levels of depravity

to try to undo him or to take him off of the scene.

Now, the Libertines, as we, I believe, brought up the last time, just so our listeners, especially that are

hearing this for the first time, they very much fit the description

that the aforementioned Raul Ruiz slanderously gave to

Calvinism.

They did believe that you could live like the devil your whole life and go to heaven.

Isn't that right?

Well, in many ways, because they had grown up in the Roman Catholic system where there was no real

sense of assurance, you would seek to live a holy life by participating in the

life of the church, in particular, receiving the sacraments, of which there were

seven, so they would try to receive as many of them as possible.

And each of those sacraments that they could receive would give an element of grace, almost like a

substance that you would try to collect in an empty jar.

And the hope was that by participating in the life of the church, by deeds of penance,

that they would accumulate enough grace so that when they died, they

would only have to have a short time in purgatory.

Or perhaps if they had enough people praying for them and enough appeals made to

the saints and to the Virgin Mary, they might be able to get enough grace to go straight

into the of God, into heaven, and to experience the

beatific vision.

That was the hope and the goal.

But the problem with Roman Catholic theology is that it's all based upon non -scriptural

ideas, the traditions of men.

And as a result, as the true gospel kept being preached, there were a group of

people who took offense at that.

It's exactly what Paul spoke of in 1 Corinthians 2, that spiritual truth is spiritually

discerned.

And these people couldn't discern what Calvin and the other Reformers were saying, and

so they were opposed to it.

And so they sought to take the Reformer down.

In fact, pick up where you left off when we return from our first commercial break.

If you'd like to join us with a question of your own, send it to chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

Give us your first name at least, city and state and country of residence.

We'll be right back.

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We are now back with Marcus Service and we are discussing

the past role of John Calvin and we were in the midst of a clarification

and identification of the Libertines and what.

Stood for if you want to pick up where you left off, brother.

Yeah, happy to.

The Libertines, as I mentioned, were the spiritual opponents of

Calvin and they sought to do him a lot of damage.

But it's good to remember something that Calvin wrote about conflict.

He said, even a dog will fight for his master when threatened.

How much more should I fight for the word of God?

Amen.

And I think that's a wonderful statement or testimony to

the determination that Calvin had to keep moving forward, to

keep his plan that he had established in mind in the

ecclesiastical ordinances, and to trust God for the results.

I wanted to read just for a moment one quote from Charles Bridges who wrote

a masterful book on Christian ministry and in that book he gives this

testimony to the labors of Calvin.

And so just listen to this summary of what Calvin did throughout his

ministry and his life.

This is Charles Bridges saying, what shall we say of Calvin's indefatigable

industry, even beyond the power of nature, which being paralleled with our

loitering, I fear will exceed all credit and may be a true

object of admiration how his lean, worn, spent, and weary body could possibly

hold out.

He read every week in the year three divinity lectures and every other week over and above.

He preached at times over every day so that Erasmus said of Chrysostom,

I do not know whether more to admire the indefatigableness of the man or his hearers.

Yea, some have reckoned up that Calvin's lectures were yearly 186, his

sermons 286.

Besides Thursday, he sat in the Presbytery and the Consistory.

Calvin's own account in one of his letters to Pharrell thus speaks, when the messenger called for my

book, the Commentary on Romans, which was his first commentary, I had 20 sheets to revise.

I had to preach, to read to the congregation, to write 42 letters, and attend to some

controversies and return answers to more than 10 persons who had interrupted me in the midst of my

labors for advice.

Well, that's a picture of the busyness.

Of John Calvin.

What do you think of that, Chris?

I'm blown away, and it's also, whenever I hear about a great saint of God,

especially from history past, but even from today, whose life and knowledge

and accomplishments and legacy is far greater than I will ever

leave to anyone I know, and these individuals, some of these

individuals, went home to be with the Lord at a far younger age than I am currently at right now.

Calvin was seven years younger than

me.

Not past, and went home to be with the Lord at 29,

and how he accomplished for the Lord infinitely more than I will ever accomplish,

and it's just, it can be embarrassing, but these kinds of things propel us and challenge us to

be better servants of Christ.

Absolutely.

I think of it as just the issue of humility, and I'm humbled

by their example, and I've lived longer than a lot of these guys,

and I wish there were times and seasons when I would have been much more productive, that's for sure.

Well, a little bit more about Calvin's pastoral ministry.

He believed very strongly that the church was typified by three marks.

He called these the note ecclesia, and the first was that there would be a fervent

preaching of the Word of God.

That was his commitment, to make sure that the Word of God was proclaimed from

week to week, and even day to day in his lectures.

Secondly, he believed a mark of the church was the proper

observance of the sacraments, of which all Protestants would believe that there

are two that the Lord has enumerated for us in the church, and that is

baptism and the Lord's supper.

Thirdly, Calvin implied a third mark, which was later popularized by John Knox, who was

one of the students of John Calvin in the Geneva Academy and his times of lecturing,

and that was the idea of discipline of the church.

You have the preaching of the Word, the proper administration of the sacraments, the discipline

of the believer.

So when we think about the church today, and what church should we be a part of

or even consider joining?

Well, it seems to be those three marks in particular have to be at the forefront of our

minds as to where we're going to settle, where we're going to know we'll be

spiritually nurtured, and that was Calvin's desire as well to make sure that in

Geneva all of that happened.

Now, one of the ways that Calvin sought to make it come about was through the offices

of the church, or you could even say certain officers within the church,

and he recognized that there were four basic offices.

There were pastors, teachers, elders, and

deacons, those four.

Now, in a lot of Reformed and Presbyterian churches, we'll have pastors, we'll have deacons,

we'll have elders, and sometimes the elders also include those who

are in the pastoral role, all of them being elders but simply having a different

calling per se in terms of time and commitments to the church.

But Calvin saw these four offices as a scriptural structure

that gave direction and guidance to the church, and kind of unique was this issue

of the teacher.

The teacher did not have the responsibility of leading worship or administering the sacraments,

but they were to be involved in the proclamation of the gospel and

the exposition of Holy Scripture on a regular basis so that every church

had someone who was particularly gifted in that area to not only write but

also to teach for the advancement of maturity in the church,

and so that was one of the things that Calvin was very much involved in.

He also felt that the officers of the church were the ones to administer the keys of the

kingdom, and so you could see that God has created certain structures

like a family that has the rod, the civil

authorities who would manifest a sword, but the

church who would manifest ecclesiastical discipline through the power of

the keys to the kingdom, and that is when there are people who claim to be

Christians and went astray, that there would be some loving

exhortation that would be given.

People would be brought before the Genevan consistory to give an explanation

of why they were not coming to church, why there was family disharmony, why they

were falling back into public sin, why they were critical of the doctrines of the church, all these different

things.

Then, if they weren't going to heed that exhortation, then there were more

serious consequences that could come in time, but that was one of the

functions of the officers of the church to exercise the keys of the kingdom.

Now, in Geneva, they recognized that the authority within the church

was not to be invested in any one man, but into a plurality of

godly elders, and so in this way, they established a pattern

that's going to be a rich example for not only those in the Baptist

world, but also those in the Presbyterian world and those in the Dutch Reformed

and various other Reformed churches, a pattern of leadership that there is to be

a session of elders or a consistory made up of elders and deacons

or some sort of leadership board that does not invest spiritual authority in

just one individual.

We can give thanks to Calvin for setting that kind of system up and popularizing it in

Geneva.

Surely, it was known in scripture, but you have to remember there have been over a thousand years

of Roman Catholic hegemony and, as it were, covering over those

spiritual patterns, and so Calvin reinstitutes that.

In regard to civil government, Calvin recognized that

there were these two different spheres of authority in any given city,

church and state, and admittedly, at that time, church and state were

much closely united in their working together than perhaps in

our time today.

Maybe that'll change over the next several decades or a century here in our own

country, which would be, I think, a good step forward.

But there was the idea that church and state work together.

Some people, because of this, felt that Calvin was the dictator of

Geneva.

I suppose you've heard that criticism, have you, Chris?

Oh yeah, the crazy ideas.

In fact, some people, I'm not even exaggerating, some people I know have actually

confused Vlad the Impaler in Transylvania with John Calvin,

and given the same anecdotes about Vlad the Impaler having

people on his front lawn impaled on stakes, and so I had to correct them

about that.

Well, that's very, very far from the truth.

I couldn't hear you.

Well, here's a few examples just to show that Calvin could not have been the dictator

of Geneva.

We've already talked about how Calvin, William Farrell,

and Ami Corot, the pastors of Geneva, were exiled from the entire city

in the year 1538.

They were declared persona non grata.

They had to leave the city.

We've already established that fact.

Secondly, when Calvin did return, one of the main points of contention from

1541 on was who had the authority

of practicing excommunication for an

unrepentant sinner?

Was that the ministers of the gospel and the consistory,

or was that the Geneva City Council?

Because of all of the abuses in the Roman Catholic system, the council in many ways

overreacted, taking that authority upon themselves.

By the way, could you pick up where you left off when we return from our midway break, please?

I'm sorry to interrupt you again.

No problem. I'll do that.

And just don't forget where you left off there.

I've got it all marked.

Please be patient with us, folks.

The middle break is always a little longer, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida,

requires us to have a longer break in the middle of the show because the FCC requires of them to localize

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Respond to as many of our advertisers as you possibly can, keeping in mind that our advertisers

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Today is part two of our discussion on John Calvin's role of pastor.

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And if you continue where you left off, Marcus, before we go to any listener questions.

Yeah, happy to.

We were discussing the idea of whether Calvin was a

dictator of the city of Geneva.

And I was given three different answers to that question.

One was to say that in 1538, he was exiled from the

city for two and a half years.

So hardly be considered a dictator of Geneva when that happened.

Secondly, there is ongoing struggle over who had the right to excommunicate the

city council or the church authorities.

Eventually, Calvin's going to win that argument, but that was a struggle throughout his entire ministry.

And then thirdly, it's important to note that Calvin never served

as an officer on any of the councils in the city of Geneva.

There are many times that he addressed him, but he never held any kind of civil office.

He was never a member of any particular council.

And it was discovered to the shame of the Genevans that they had never actually even made him a

citizen of the city of Geneva until 1559, when they just happened to

notice that, oh, my gosh, our pastor is not even a citizen of the whole

city.

Yeah, he's the native of France.

That's right.

So they quickly took care of that problem.

But it was just a good example of how this claim that somehow he was a dictator of

the city was actually not at all true.

And I want to say just a little...

Go ahead.

I want to say a little word about his preaching.

One of the things that Calvin was noted for, obviously, was

preaching the word of God.

And one of the important aspects that he brings to the table when it comes to

preaching is what he referred to as Lectio Continuo, which

is the preaching of one passage after another.

And that type of preaching, although Calvin obviously did not invent it, there were other

reformers who were doing similar things, but Calvin certainly gets credit for

popularizing expositional preaching.

Verse after verse, chapter after chapter, book after book.

And if you do any study of Calvin and his pastoral ministry, you'll

see that thanks to the recording efforts of the deacons in the city,

we have a number of his sermons.

In fact, thousands of his sermons.

In, let's see, 1549, the deacons realized that nobody was actually doing a good job of

recording his sermons.

So they actually hired a man, Denise Rognier, who developed a system for

taking down Calvin's sermons because he delivered them without notes.

And so there was nothing to go back to, but he would take down word for word in the

shorthand method, and then he would submit the manuscripts to Calvin for any corrections.

And those manuscripts later become what's known as the commentaries that have

made Calvin so famous over the years.

His comments, not only on different portions of scripture, but different points of theology as

well.

So Calvin, he would preach in the mornings and then he would preach

in the afternoons, typically at St. Pierre, which was the largest

church facility in Geneva, but also he would go out to some of the smaller chapels.

La Madeleine was one of the ones he went to frequently, which was only about a half mile away from

St. Pierre, just down the hill.

And he would preach there on Sunday evenings oftentimes.

He also was committed, besides preaching verse by verse,

that he was committed to also having his sermons published, if at all possible.

And so we can be thankful today that we can get a lot of Calvin's sermons.

Denise Rognier and his service recorded over 2 ,000 sermons

of Calvin, and we have most of them all in print.

And so Old Pass Publications, Banner of Truth, Eerdmans, P &R,

all of those different companies have been pretty dedicated at keeping the sermons of

Calvin in print.

Probably Banner of Truth is the most notable for a lot of recent

publications, and I would highly recommend people to read his.

Sermons.

By the way, I must throw in there that you could get books by all of those publishers,

and specifically about and by John Calvin, at cvbbs .com,

who sponsored this program.

Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, cvbbs .com.

I'm sorry, continue.

No, excellent.

Now Calvin's also known for teaching the Word, and he saw that as

different from his sermons that he would give on Sunday or during

midweek preaching services.

But typically, every day, he would go into a small building,

which was to the south of the St. Pierre,

and it was called the Auditoire, or the Auditorium.

And there he would give lectures in theology.

And again, those lectures were taken down, and they found their way into many of

the commentaries that we have on Scripture.

He would give lectures on different books of the Bible, on different

theological subjects, and so forth.

If you go to the Baker Books edition of the commentaries, you

will see in that multi -volume set, 30 ,000 pages

of notes that were written down on Calvin's lectures in the

Auditoire.

I mean, it's amazing to think about that, that over the space of his ministry, he could lecture and

teach that much.

Beyond that, he wrote a number of theological treaties, a very important one on Providence,

also on concerning the eternal

predestination of God, a very popular treatise called The

Necessity of Reforming the Church, and then one that I've enjoyed a great deal

called A Short Treatise on the Lord's Supper.

I'd highly recommend any of those different theological writings that Calvin put together.

And then, of course, above all, is The Institutes of the Christian Religion.

Calvin first started that back in 1536.

He just simply referred to it as his small book, his little book, that could be hidden

in a coat pocket.

That was a summary of Christian doctrine, but it grew through five editions over the

years into a massive four books, which typically are contained

today in one or two volumes.

I recommend, in particular, the two -volume set that you can find

published in the Presbyterian World.

I'm blanking now on the translator, but it'll come to me shortly.

But that's a really good set of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion that I would highly

recommend.

Calvin was involved in dealing with controversy.

Did you know, Chris, that Calvin.

Got into a sword fight?

No, I did not.

I would love to have seen that.

I know he must have won.

He must have won because he didn't die of a sword injury.

Well, the problem was that he got into a sword fight, but he didn't have a sword.

How do you.

Like that?

Yeah, that's a dangerous activity, that's for sure.

Yes, it is.

Well, what happened is this.

It was in 1547, there was a conflict going on in the city of Geneva,

and there were some who felt that Ami Perrin, who was the head of the

city militia, had entered into a secret agreement with some of the officials in

France to somehow get a toehold in Geneva.

Geneva considered itself a free city.

There was a friend of Calvin as well, who also was implicated in that, and both men

were put in prison until the date of the trial.

Well, at the time of the trial, Ami Perrin was released.

He was, by the way, part of the Libertine party, the opponents of Calvin.

This other man, Mike Gray was his name, was kept in prison, and that caused a lot of turmoil in

Geneva.

One day, Calvin and the ministers had gone to the city council to argue about a certain

point, and on their way back, they just happened in God's providence to pass by

one of the large assembly halls where the council of the 200 was meeting.

These were minor officials elected from the various neighborhoods in Geneva, and they were

quarreling over this injustice that Ami

Perrin was released, and this other man, Mike Gray, was still kept in prison.

They were ready to draw swords, and Calvin and the ministers heard the turmoil.

They ran inside the building, cast open the doors, and found that everybody was about ready to do battle,

and Calvin hurled himself right into the middle of the whole thing.

He stood there ready to give up his life for

the sake of what was going on, and he felt for sure

that he would lose his life.

In fact, some reported that he grabbed a hold of his shirt, and he ripped it open and

said that if there's any blood to be drawn today, let it begin with me,

and at that point, everybody dropped their swords, and he began to preach to them

and had a very powerful effect upon the people who were ready to do battle and

fight, and he brought back peace into the really, really challenging

time.

After that, Calvin felt sure he was going to be exiled again from the city, but again, in God's

providence, he was not, and he was able to continue his ministry.

Have you ever heard that story, Chris?

Never heard it, and I've heard many stories about.

John Calvin, and that is a first that I've heard that one.

Well, that story, by the way, is an official

entry in the Register of the Company of the Pastors of Geneva,

which is published by Eerdmans and translated by Philip Hughes, and so we can give thanks to

God that such a record like that exists, and also there are a number of

letters from Calvin where he explains what happened when he was

writing to his dear friend, Pierre Vire, and also

to other friends who he wanted to share what actually happened that day.

By the way, you could get.

Books by Pierre Vire from

Zurich Publishing.

I don't know if you're familiar with Zurich.

Publishing.

I am, and I've written some of the promos for some of those books on Pierre

Vire, and also by

Jean -Marc Berthoud, that's who I'm thinking of, who has written a number

of sermons on the law of God, which are very significant and worthwhile to read.

Yes, I've given both Vire and.

The book that you've just mentioned, books by Vire and the book

you just mentioned, away at my Pastors Luncheons, the Iron Trip and Zion Radio free

Pastors Luncheons, thanks to our friends at Zurich Publishing who

provided every pastor in attendance a free copy of each of those works.

And if anybody wants more details, go to zurichpublishing

.org, zurichpublishing .org.

I figured I'd throw that out there even though they don't advertise with us.

I wanted to let our listeners know about a very valuable publishing organization.

I want to ask you a quick question.

Sure.

I used to have a small book, and for the life of me, I don't know where it is now, I've moved

twice at least since I last knew where that book was, a small

book called Calvin A Life, and the author was

either Emanuel Schtickl Gruber or Schtickl Berger.

Are you familiar with that?

Yeah, I think it's the best biography in

print on the life of John Calvin.

Wow.

I better find that book.

Yeah, you can still find copies from AB books, used copies that

are, that is, but Emanuel Schtickl Berger writes in a very colorful way.

Yes.

He's a Swiss reformed Presbyterian who

rejoiced in the doctrines of grace.

It's especially fun to see the picture on the back of the dust cover of Schtickl Berger

sitting in the library in Geneva smoking a cigar while he's writing the manuscript for

his biography on Calvin.

Not that I'm a cigar smoker, but I just thought it was hilarious.

In fact, I think the copy that I had did not have.

Any longer a dust jacket.

But one of the things I wanted to ask you about in particular is that Schtickl Berger

included in that book, unless I am just totally misremembering this, I don't think I am,

but Schtickl Berger included in that biography something that I never saw anywhere else

in writing.

And if I'm not mistaken, he claimed that he pled with

Servetus to repent and, well, Servetus was in prison,

and Servetus did repent and he, Calvin, attempted to call

off the execution.

Am I correct in remembering that?

Well, that's not exactly true.

Well, maybe you could revisit that book to see if I'm right in remembering that.

It's actually a different book.

It's a book by Cotillier, which is a very small little

biography on John Calvin.

It's a very good biography.

I think it's Dr. Joe Moorcraft's favorite biography on John Calvin.

Must be good, then.

And it is good, I have to admit.

But the reality is that there was a report, an official report

given in the Register of the Company of Pastors about the death of

Servetus.

And it says that Servetus was condemned and was to be

taken to Champaray to be burnt alive there.

This was done without any sign of repentance for his errors being given by

Servetus at the time of his death.

Okay.

And so that testimony, which comes from the official

records of the Council of Pastors, undercuts the claim that

Servetus repented at the last moment.

Now, I knew that Calvin attempted to persuade the Genevan

authorities not to burn him alive, but is there any evidence

that he even later added to that urging to call off the execution?

Yeah, well, Calvin, he served as the,

as it were, the prosecuting attorney in the trial of Servetus.

And again, you can find a record of the entire trial with Servetus'

statements that he uttered at the trial, which were all taken down in the Company of the

Register of Pastors, or the Register of the Company of Pastors of Geneva.

And the trial records are all in there.

It is a very sobering read to read through the answers that

Servetus gave.

You begin to see the depth of the heresy and the

deception that was so prominent in Servetus.

He was not a person to be esteemed or lifted up

as a paragon of virtue.

He was not a person to be lifted up as a lamp of liberty.

He was a very self -focused, narcissistic man who decided

in his mania to take on the most accomplished theologian in all of Europe, and that was

John Calvin.

And so he wrote against Calvin.

He stole some of Calvin's letters and put them into his

inflammatory book called the Restitutio de Christianisme,

or the Restitution of Christianity, kind of in contrast to the Institutes.

And eventually when he came to Geneva in 1553, a lot of people believed that he came

at the encouragement of the libertines.

Servetus had already been condemned to death down in Lyon.

He escaped from there before the sentence was carried out.

And like a moth drawn to a bright light, he came to

Geneva.

Now Calvin had actually warned him at different times to never come to Geneva.

And when he was discovered there, then he was immediately arrested.

And because the Geneva authorities saw him as a real threat

to not only the established order of the church, but also to the entire city, to

overturn or make upside down all the things that they held dear.

And again, it appears that the libertines were behind

the appearance of Servetus.

Eventually through the trial, he was condemned to death.

And this was done at the advice of several of the other cities, major cities of

Protestant Switzerland.

The city fathers sent the notes of the trial, the

record of the trial to these other cities.

They all agreed that he should be put to death.

And Calvin sought to ameliorate

the form of death, which the Geneva city fathers wanted to put him to death by

what they call the petite fure, the small fire.

And that would of course would have been terrible and miserable to suffer such a thing.

Calvin interceded on behalf of Servetus that he would be simply

be beheaded and it would be quickly over.

But the city fathers would not listen to Calvin.

And again, another evidence that Calvin was not the dictator of the city.

And they went ahead with the execution in October of 1553.

And that became a blot, so to speak, on Calvin's

character and Calvin's ministry.

Now, this was primarily because of his opposition to or denial of the

Trinity and also for uh his uh

refusal to recognize infant baptism.

Weren't those the two.

Issues?

There was a third one.

There was a third one and that was the rejection of any sort of doctrine of

predestination and foreknowledge, divine sovereignty of God.

Okay.

And so you have those three issues that Servetus sought to undercut.

He was probably most well known for his rejection of the Trinity.

Right.

And his characterization of the Trinity as a

unholy superstitious alliance between despotic forces.

I mean, he had some very colorful language.

And again, you got to read the trial to realize what kind of person he really

was.

Yeah, definitely.

Will.

And by the way, I've also heard, and maybe you can correct me if this is error,

I've also heard that in contradiction to the portrayal

of Servetus by many to gain sympathy for him of being some kind of an

innocent victim, I have heard, I have heard, and I may be wrong, that he was

calling upon for the death of Calvin.

Absolutely.

His plan was to turn the trial against him

into a litany of offenses against Calvin.

In his goal, which he actually made very clear over the course of his trial, and

also as he spoke with William Farrell, who came several times to preach the gospel to

Servetus, his goal was essentially to take Calvin's place as the

pastor of the church and as the chief theological voice of the Reformation.

That's what he thought to do.

He wanted to supplant Calvin and for Calvin then to then be

imprisoned and put to death.

And so you're exactly right in terms of what you've heard about what the goal of Servetus was.

Let me take a quick question from Floyd in Rochester, New York.

Floyd asks, is there any way of knowing whether or not John

Calvin would have agreed with the execution of Servetus if his only

disagreement with Calvin was over infant baptism?

I think in answer to that question, he would not have been executed.

He would have been exiled, which was the typical

punishment that was used by the Geneva City Council to

remove people who were challenging the doctrines and practices of the church.

But the issue with Servetus was much more complicated because he had written

so extensively and published books not only against the doctrine of the

Trinity and the sovereignty of God and infant baptism,

but he had also called out Calvin by name.

There was a time where Calvin corresponded with him and had sent him 30 different

letters.

And Servetus actually took those letters, put them into his book, and then

essentially just took apart all of Calvin's arguments with his

criticisms and his accusations against Calvin.

And so it was a much more serious issue.

And it is a bit of a hypothetical question to consider, but I think Servetus would have

been simply exiled.

And that was the case with several others who were not citizens of Geneva.

They were critics of Calvin or of the Genevan practices of the

Reformed church.

And so they were declared to be persona non grata in Geneva.

The reason why Floyd's question is excellent, because as a Reformed Baptist myself,

and I think this is very typical, I think, of Reformed Baptist experience, that

our fellow Baptists who are anti -Calvinist

will very often accuse us of being foolish because we would

give such a high view of Calvin in the place of history

because they will describe him as a murderer of Baptists.

Now he, well first of all, he never personally killed anybody.

That's right.

But Servetus was not a Baptist.

He was an anti -Trinitarian.

Yeah.

And there were numbers of people who came to Geneva

who held to extraneous, erroneous, heterodox

beliefs that were out of accord with scripture.

And they came with the hopes that perhaps they could establish a

congregation or get a following in Geneva, but they didn't really understand what Geneva was

all about.

Geneva had moved away rapidly in 1534 and

35 away from Roman Catholicism.

And it wasn't that they just became a free city that didn't believe in anything.

They became a free city which had embraced the

teachings of Reformation.

And so when we think of the great rallying cries of the Reformation, Sola Gratia, Sola Fide,

Sola Scriptura, and so on, that's what the Genevan church

fully adopted as their position.

And so anybody who is coming into town wanting to disrupt that

orthodoxy was going to not be welcome in the city of Geneva.

There were other places that would take them.

And if they were wise, they would have never come to Geneva in the first place because they

should have known that there was a strong commitment to the authority of Holy Scripture in

Geneva, and nothing was going to shake them from that.

And by the way, we have to go to our final break right now.

And if you have a question, send it immediately because we're rapidly running out of time.

Chris Zarnesen at gmail .com.

We'll be right back.

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Welcome back.

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Also, folks, if you're a man in ministry leadership, you are invited to the next free

Iron Sharpens Iron radio biannual pastor's luncheon, Thursday, June the 6th,

11 a .m. to 2 p .m. at Church of the Living Christ in Loisville, Pennsylvania.

Everything is absolutely free of charge, including lunch, and everybody in attendance is going to receive a very

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That's also the email address where you can send in a question for my guest, Marcus Servin, on the

pastoral role of John Calvin, chrisarnzen at gmail .com.

And we do have a listener, Zeke, in Tarrytown, Louisiana.

And Zeke says, to your knowledge, did John Calvin ever become even

nearly persuaded that the ordinance of foot washing

should be included to the two sacraments you already.

Mentioned?

To my knowledge, John Calvin never embraced or

even contemplated the idea of foot washing.

The obvious reason would be that it's only mentioned in one

place.

So if you build a practice or contemplate having something

be a sacrament, it has to show up in a multiplicity of

places in Holy Scripture and not just as an example

of what our Lord has done.

Now, none of that is to take away anything from foot washing, which demonstrates the

humility and the tender -hearted way that our Lord cared for his disciples

and made that very evident.

But I can't remember anything in Calvin's ministry that would ever

be even close to him contemplating that practice.

Well, if you could, I want you to make sure that you cover everything that you

intended to cover today.

So please pick up where you left off and we'll let the program run its course.

All right.

Thanks, Chris.

I did want to say that the best edition of the Institutes, that in my

opinion, is in the Library of Christian Classics.

It's a two -volume set and it contains the four books of the

Institutes.

It's edited by John McNeill and translated by Ford Lewis Battles.

That would be the closest in English to

what we're used to reading.

If you get some of the older editions of the Institutes, it's in

more of Victorian type of English, which is harder for us to understand.

But this one by Ford Lewis Battles is, I think, the best one in print today.

And you can get copies in used bookstores or online from AB Books or

even Amazon will have copies of this translation of the Institutes.

I want to say something just a bit about Calvin's concern

for shepherding the souls of those for whom he was entrusted.

He had this to write in his commentary on Acts chapter 20, verse 20.

He said that Christ did not ordain pastors on the principle that they only teach the

church in a general way on the public platform, but that they care for the

individual sheep.

They bring back the wandering and scattered to the fold.

They bind up the broken and the crippled.

They heal the sick and support the frail and the weak.

That was his vision for shepherds, pastors in

caring for the sheep of the flock.

And to that mind, Calvin wrote an extensive number of

letters, many of which have been preserved for us.

And if you read through the letters, you get a very different impression of the man than the typical

caricature that he's somehow this lofty theologian who cares not for

the individual trials and difficulties of people.

Instead, just the opposite.

You see how much he cares for people, how he wrote to some people who were

in high positions of authority or positions as kings and

queens and princes and princesses to try to share the gospel with them.

And then with many, many friends and associates, and you see a very tender side emerge

out of his letters.

He was committed to visiting the sick, not only himself, but also for

the deacons and the elders of the congregation in Geneva to carry out that ministry.

And it was under his watch that the Genevan church established several hospitals,

one for people who suffered under the plague, but also just an

ordinary hospital for people who broke their arm or they had some illness or another.

Those were all overseen and run by the deacons.

There was the visitation of prisoners.

And Calvin himself, as well as many of the other ministers, would take turns in going into the

jails in Geneva to preach the gospel and to pray with and to visit the

prisoners that were held there.

He was committed to visiting families, as well as

all the rural churches, because Geneva was more than just the city.

It had, in essence, a province or an outlying area all around the city,

and those had smaller churches.

In fact, at one point, some of those smaller churches complained that Calvin had

not done his duty in visiting some of those countryside churches.

By the way, brother, I think that we.

Have to add part three because we're out of time.

So I want to make sure that we give the listeners your contact information, your

websites, first of all, for Reformation—I'm sorry, Redeemer Presbyterian Church in Austin,

Texas.

Go to RedeemerPrez .org, RedeemerPrez .org.

And don't forget about the Genevan Foundation, the GenevanFoundation

.com.

That's the Genevan Foundation dot com.

Thank you so much, Marcus, and I do want you to come back.

Sounds like you have a lot more to say on this issue, and I want to thank everybody who listened, and I want you

all to always remember for the rest of your lives, Jesus Christ is a far greater Savior than you are a sinner.